Performance: Slavs and Tatars

The internationally renowned artist collective Slavs and Tatars creates exhibitions, books, and lectures focusing on the art and politics of Eurasia. Join the artists as they present their newest performance-lecture, Red-Black Thread, in conjunction with the exhibition Siah Armajani: Follow This Line.

As described by the group, this event “addresses the construction of race, namely blackness, from the perspective of Russia, the Soviet Union, and communism. Due to the slave trade in the Americas and European imperialism, blackness is often construed through an Atlanticist perspective and in Anglophone and Francophone bodies of knowledge. From imperial Russia’s involvement in Africa to the Soviet instrumentalization of ‘the Negro question’ in the United States, Red-Black Thread challenges this Atlanticist understanding of blackness and race, through an unlikely constellation of ideas including orientalism [and] multiculturalism.”

Slavs and Tatars is an international collective of artists and designers whose practice is based on three activities: exhibitions, publications, and lecture-performances. Their work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Salt, Istanbul; Vienna Secession; Kunsthalle Zurich; and Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, among others. In addition to their translation of the Azerbaijani satirical periodical Molla Nasreddin, Slavs and Tatars have published 10 books to date, most recently Wripped Scripped (2018), on alphabet politics and transliteration.